Every time I think the Canadian wankersphere can't possibly sink any lower, they manage to purely take my breath away. Consider this dishonest piece of swill from the keyboard of one Damian Penny, which we shall deconstruct little by little, with Penny including excerpts from, and responding to, a recent writer in the Globe and Mail:
[PENNY] It is this sort of idiocy on the part of Mr Martin that makes it hard to take many Canadian journalists seriously (full text not online).
...
[MARTIN] Among the international agreements that Mr. Bush has spurned or abandoned are ...the ban on weapons in space..
[PENNY] Mr Martin is dead wrong.
Stop right there. Note how, according to Penny, Martin is "dead wrong." Not just inaccurate, or misleading, or simply wrong. No, he's "dead wrong," phraseology that suggests a jaw-dropping, eye-rolling kind of dishonesty totally and utterly detached from reality in every possible way without even a scintilla of truth to justify its existence.
So how exactly is Martin's claim above "dead wrong"? Writes Penny:
There is no treaty banning weapons as such in space. There is however a treaty banning the placing of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space. This is the 1967 so-called Outer Space Treaty.
There is also the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water.
Ah, there we go. Apparently, Martin wasn't pedantic enough for Penny, writing "weapons" rather than "nuclear weapons" or "weapons of mass destruction" or whatever it is that might have satisfied Penny's nitpickery; hence, Mr. Martin's "dead wrongness."
It's highly entertaining to see this kind of anal pedantry coming from the same class of neo-con wankers who, when actual WMDs weren't found in Iraq, proceeded to cast an absurdly wide net to drag absolutely everything under the umbrella of "WMDs." (Who among us will ever forget the fearsome Iraqi "Winnebagos of Death?")
Now, however, as you can see, Penny raises the art of nitpickery to a wankerrific new level in order to discredit Martin's claim. But Penny's dumbfuckery doesn't end there, oh no. Astonishingly, Penny moves one foot just long enough to make room for the other one as he responds to Martin's claim that Bush has "spurned or abandoned" the international treaties:
The US is a signatory of both treaties and has not withdrawn from them.
A senior Globe columnist should have greater knowledge or bother to do some research. Typical intellectual laziness--and shameless anti-Bush bias--on the part of our media.
Hmmmm ... maybe it's just me but I don't see that Martin ever claimed that Bush "withdrew" from those treaties, do you? I do read the words "spurned" or "abandoned" which, in my humble opinion, mean very different things.
By way of analogy, the Bush administration has most emphatically not "withdrawn" from NAFTA, although one could certainly make the case that it has spurned it given that it treats NAFTA with about the same respect as used toilet paper, which makes Martin's position at least potentially defensible. (There is, of course, the wee detail that the Pentagon really is looking to put weapons in space, but let's not cloud a good rant with actual, you know, reality, shall we?)
Damian Penny: Raising the bar for dishonest, nitpicky dumbfucks everywhere.
4 comments:
The higher the bar, the easier it is to slither under.
Of course, we can't forget the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Bush gives nuclear technology to a non-signing nation (India) and threatens a signing nation (Iran) if they don't dismantle their nuclear program completely.
I don't see Penny's point when he tries to draw a distinction between generic weapons in space, versus "nuclear" weapons and weapons of mass destruction. If you already accept that nuclear weapons and WMDs are banned, what's left?
Realistically, what other kinds of weapons does Penny think are still viable? Catapults? Really big crossbows? Herring fired at high velocity? What?
Penny really is making an ass of himself by desperately trying to draw a distinction where no real distinction exists.
I've heard that the US military's dream for future weaponry includes bombs which can be dropped from orbit. Such bomb doesn't need to be nuclear, chemical, or biological in nature. The advantage of such a weapons system is to be able to bomb a target anywhere in the world at a moments notice, without the need for a nearby airbase, missile base, or large naval vessel.
Of course, it would be naive to think that the US wouldn't use such a system to mount nuclear warheads. Especially since the US military is also keen to develop smaller, tactical nuclear weapons.
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